In her darkness, she sees them much in the same way she sees the sun. By way of feel, alone. By how they cast their warmth over her like brilliant stars. By how they touch upon the earth around her, plucking ripples on the surface of her still waters and sending their love back to her in waves ‒ thrusting upwards into the starless abyss, like landmarks on an empty map. They are the way they move, rapping their tattoos into the ground, leaving hoofprints like braille for her to feel.
One, tiny and wan; the other, large and beset upon.
The rest, unknown.
So, when the girl makes way across the sea of grass ‒ frolicking in the imaginations of her own merry fantasy ‒ the Skald raises her head and turns those clouded, bright eyes in her direction. Searching and hopeful. It is, as with the phantasmal ways they pay her visitations in her dreams and reverie, a cruel kind of familiarity that settles in her gut, heavy as stones. She does not, as she so hoped she would by now, swiftly separate the small beating of hooves from the image of her Eirlys. It happens in a slow sort of way ‒ for at first it wears his skin and she can feel him getting nearer, her heart rapping like a wounded bird against her breastbone. The knowing, logical part of her must begin the unravelling. The parting and the mourning; and it is in this way that Edda is sentenced to bury him, over and over again.
His spiriting away had happened so suddenly ‒ so soon ‒ that she had not been able to offer him a goodbye; a comfort like tithes for his soul. She had not been able to reconcile it with herself in a way that felt like enough.
So he haunts her.
Her pink nostrils flare, finding the scent of the little stranger amongst the earthiness of late fall. Her stomach clenches, the finality ‒ the certainty ‒ a blow that almost compels her to surrender. To flare like a white flag on the wind and consign herself to the aimless without ‒ to accept what had always felt unacceptable. That she was never meant to have them in the first place ‒ her loves and her anchors ‒ that they had been eidolon and fantasy of her own.
But she does not, because she is stronger than she looks.
‘Are you a dragon?’ Edda blinks, head tilting ever so slightly. She remembers these things ‒ (I can speak frog, wanna hear, mumma? RRRrRrrribitttt) ‒ the beautiful flights of a child’s mind. Those reminders of magic hiding behind the veil of the mundane. “A dragon?” her voice is whispery and thin, she is still surprised to have found it after such a long time. “I have seen plenty of dragons ‒ and ghosts of dragons ‒ enough to admit that I am not one,” she shifts her weight, her bright, senseless gaze settling on where she hopes the girl stands, brows lifted, “are there many dragons here?”
One, tiny and wan; the other, large and beset upon.
The rest, unknown.
So, when the girl makes way across the sea of grass ‒ frolicking in the imaginations of her own merry fantasy ‒ the Skald raises her head and turns those clouded, bright eyes in her direction. Searching and hopeful. It is, as with the phantasmal ways they pay her visitations in her dreams and reverie, a cruel kind of familiarity that settles in her gut, heavy as stones. She does not, as she so hoped she would by now, swiftly separate the small beating of hooves from the image of her Eirlys. It happens in a slow sort of way ‒ for at first it wears his skin and she can feel him getting nearer, her heart rapping like a wounded bird against her breastbone. The knowing, logical part of her must begin the unravelling. The parting and the mourning; and it is in this way that Edda is sentenced to bury him, over and over again.
His spiriting away had happened so suddenly ‒ so soon ‒ that she had not been able to offer him a goodbye; a comfort like tithes for his soul. She had not been able to reconcile it with herself in a way that felt like enough.
So he haunts her.
Her pink nostrils flare, finding the scent of the little stranger amongst the earthiness of late fall. Her stomach clenches, the finality ‒ the certainty ‒ a blow that almost compels her to surrender. To flare like a white flag on the wind and consign herself to the aimless without ‒ to accept what had always felt unacceptable. That she was never meant to have them in the first place ‒ her loves and her anchors ‒ that they had been eidolon and fantasy of her own.
But she does not, because she is stronger than she looks.
‘Are you a dragon?’ Edda blinks, head tilting ever so slightly. She remembers these things ‒ (I can speak frog, wanna hear, mumma? RRRrRrrribitttt) ‒ the beautiful flights of a child’s mind. Those reminders of magic hiding behind the veil of the mundane. “A dragon?” her voice is whispery and thin, she is still surprised to have found it after such a long time. “I have seen plenty of dragons ‒ and ghosts of dragons ‒ enough to admit that I am not one,” she shifts her weight, her bright, senseless gaze settling on where she hopes the girl stands, brows lifted, “are there many dragons here?”
Voice | @Maeve
MUSONART
MINOR POWERPLAYING IS PERMITTED
